WATCH: This is my favourite thing on the internet right now. Well done Norway! youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

Eliminating the Impossible xkcd.com/3210/

"Simon Harris had denounced the Deskerati as a shadowy force of people with terrifying horizontal wooden surfaces at their disposal, preventing him from bringing in facial recognition via CCTV." www.thegist.ie/the-gist-a-balancing-act/

‘. . . The rapidly growing field of computer vision is contributing to the legacy of surveillance technologies, technologies that have infringed on privacy, limited free expression, exacerbated disparities and created conditions facilitating abuse of power.’

A good example of how age verification techniques can backfire, leaving you open to security risks. My main issue with biometrics for online IDs is that *you can’t change them* if your identity is stolen. And you can’t change your PPS number either. #SpeirGorm www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/20...

still unclear to me how the species made it this far

Privacy is a big deal for cars, especially electric cars. Many are worried about Chinese cars. What is worth remembering is that Western car manufacturers all fail on respecting user privacy www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/priv... #Privacy #EV

Ireland, Day 1056 of The Rain. Everything is saturated to the grey of the sky. Moss covers every surface. The outdoors sounds like constant static. The entire staff of Met Éireann is on mental health leave. I’ve forgotten what dry clothes feel like. It is still a yellow weather alert. #SpeirGorm

“A key driver of China’s AI momentum stems from its aggressive embrace of open models, a shift sparked by DeepSeek’s breakout success. Since then, Chinese AI labs have jumped on the open-model bandwagon.The turn to open models in China “has dramatically reduced costs for developers & enterprises,””

When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured” www.reuters.com/investigatio...

“The climate scientists we surveyed were unambiguous: current economic models can’t capture what matters most – the cascading failures and compounding shocks that define climate risk in a warmer world – and could undermine the very foundations of economic growth.” This should be THE story everyday.

🇪🇺 The EU wants to boost open source with better funding and a new strategy, and they're looking for your feedback. Here's your chance to shape the future of EU tech policy. Share your opinion by February 3. Learn more.👇

This article is a very useful reframing of the tired “Europe falling behind in tech” whinge. Europe has actually build the foundations for socially useful tech, for decades. What it has not done is attempt to create Empires by extracting cash from that work. ploum.net/2026-01-22-w...

Charles Yang of Time for Three absolutely slaying me. I would lose my mind if I heard this live. Even crappy phone speakers made me scream and cry.

“One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.” “Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bike.” #CityMakingMath Some costs aren’t costs.

AI & Humans: Making the Relationship Work Leaders of many organizations are urging their teams to adopt agentic AI to improve efficiency, but are finding it hard to achieve any benefit. Managers attempting to add AI agents to existing human teams may find that bots fail to faithfully follow their…

AI and the Corporate Capture of Knowledge More than a decade after Aaron Swartz's death, the United States is still living inside the contradiction that destroyed him. Swartz believed that knowledge, especially publicly funded knowledge, should be freely accessible. Acting on that, he downloaded…

We are pleased to announce the 13 - 16 April 13, 2026 Software Citation Workshop in San Diego, California — an interactive, cross‑disciplinary event focused on advancing best practices, implementation strategies, and community engagement for software citation in astronomy research (and beyond). 1/6

The cyberpsychologist says that Grok’s ‘nudify’ controversy is not just a 'bad app' issue — it is a global governance challenge... jrnl.ie/6928174

In the meantime, the replay from December on the Value Paths for OSPOs and ISPOs by @claredillon.bsky.social is online, together with all the previous sessions. 🎥 You can watch them at ospo-alliance.org/onramp/past_... bsky.app/profile/ospo...

Absolutely top-notch comic-ry from #xkcd today.

Rob Reiner: I'm going to make a coming of age drama, a fantasy adventure story, a romantic comedy, a psychological horror and then a courtroom drama. Us: Across your entire career? Reiner: In a 6 year period. Us: That sounds- Reiner: -Each one will be arguably the best movie in that genre.

The tenants of "The Complex" the brilliant arts space just off Capel St Stop are being evicted in January and the city can't afford to lose yet *another* cultural space. Please sign & share the petition to save The Complex

At a meeting Monday, councillors fumed over the govt's delay of Dart extension meant to serve thousands of homes. “If we keep taking money away from these projects and delaying them, we’re just going to condemn people to slowly losing the will to live in gridlock.”

“Maybe we’re onto something.” “How can we tell? We’ve only done this 187,623 times with the same success every single time. Could be a fluke.”

I’d never have guessed.

Read this interview with @peterthorne.bsky.social to understand how dire the situation is with respect to US science funding. The US has played an outsized role in Earth observations and global coordination, and even if other nations decide to step in, it would take at least a decade to recover.

UK consumers warned over AI chatbots giving inaccurate financial advice

People support structures that support them. Who in your workplace is the biggest slopAI enthusiast? news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

"The research built on some other ethically dubious scholarship, which posits that personality traits can be sussed out just based on a person’s facial features." futurism.com/future-socie...

True story. Via @xkcd.com

Mind Blowingly Good Cycle Lanes planned That’s a bold statement. I like it www.timeout.com/london/news/...

NEW: Air traffic growth is not a guarantee of economic growth, despite industry claims. These claims, often echoed by governments to justify airport expansion, are undermined by new research. 🧵⤵️

It’s awesome to see this — but seriously, it’s so damn frustrating that we have to fight this fight in every city when the science couldn’t be clearer. Get the cars out, make more money for local shops, and build cities that are exciting, healthy, and happy for everyone.

The world’s first trillionaire initiated a move that has left more than half a million people dead, most of whom are children.

📣 I am hiring a postdoc! aial.ie/hiring/postd... applications from suitable candidates that are passionate about investigating the use of genAI in public service operations with the aim of keeping governments transparent and accountable are welcome pls share with your networks

Most of Ireland's uplands are commonage, ie co-owned by local farmers. The ONLY real income from commonage is via subsidies, almost always for ecosystem-killing sheep. This is why Irish mountains are all empty wastelands, kept that way by your taxes. Why are we STILL not paying farmers to rewild??

Ireland officially joins CERN as member state

sorry can’t talk. my smart toaster and my smart bed is trying to kill me www.dexerto.com/entertainmen...

📣 Exciting news! NORF is delighted to announce funding for four #OpenResearchNetworks under the 2025 NORF Open Research Fund: Diamond Capacity Hub Ireland, Open Repositories Ireland, Sonraí and TROPIC. Read about the funded projects on the NORF website👉 norf.ie/2025-norf-op... @dri.ie @ria.ie

I was thrilled to be invited to participate in the Turing Way fireside chat about governance along with @richlitt.bsky.social and @claredillon.bsky.social with hosts Jennifer Tridgell and Arielle Bennett-Lovell. Here's a summary with a link to the video. fastwonderblog.com/2025/10/16/t...

WOW! Our survey of scientists who stopped using Twitter and started using Bluesky is now the #1 most-shared on social media article in the history of the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology! Thanks for reading it, everyone! @sicbjournals.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/icb/... 🧪

AI costs more money to run than it can possibly earn, how is this ever supposed to work? bsky.app/profile/edzi...

We’re excited to welcome Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal Foundation, to ADVANCE 2025, ADAPT’s flagship AI, industry & policy forum happening tomorrow. Join leading voices shaping the future of AI. #ADVANCE2025 #AI #Innovation @researchireland.ie @signal.org

I don't usually say this about people I've never met but Manchán Magan's death at just 55 is such a loss to the world www.rte.ie/news/2025/10...

Here’s another good summary of the disturbing growth of drone as first responder programs in the U.S. from the EFF: www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

New research by climate scientists at Maynooth University in conjunction with Met Éireann has found Ireland's record summer night time temperatures this year were made 40 times more likely by human-caused climate change

Ireland just released a report showing the huge success of the unconditional basic income it provided to artists. Each $1 spent led to society gaining $1.39. Artists' earned incomes went up more than their side job incomes fell. And they were happier and used less welfare www.gov.ie/en/departmen...

I have been logged out of my toothbrush.

One of the less known aspects about the Easter Rising is that Indian students at UCD also took part & were then deported by the British authorities for it. Among those students was V.V. Giri who became president of India and said “when I am not an Indian, I am an Irishman”